A design policy for autonomous mobile robots favors widely accepted using as many sensors and as much powerful recognition hardware as possible to realize reliable robot operation. If we plan to use developed technology for commercial products, a separate design policy favors a minimum number of sensors and recognition hardware, i.e., the number enough for reliable operation. We named the robot designed under the latter design policy the Minimal Autonomous Mover (MAM) and built a MAM to participate in the Tsukuba Challenge, a competition for among autonomous mobile robots. In this competition, our robot reached the goal and completed the mission as reported in the sections that follow.

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Supporting Online Materials:
13. [a] http://www.ntf.or.jp/challenge/
    [Accessed March 31, 2014]
14. [b] http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge05/
    [Accessed March 31, 2014]